Family and friends, books and gardening, service and soul while wandering along this road called life.

Archive for March, 2010

We drove all afternoon and into the sun-setting hours to get back home, taking turns driving as each napped for a while, heads bobbing, a startling snore or two drawing a smile from whoever was at the wheel. NPR enlightened us through most of Wisconsin; a crane in the grasses here, wild turkeys rummaging there.

The Rockford Oasis was our last “pit stop”. That last leg always seems the longest. It was there we noticed, low in the darkened sky, the moon swelling just over the horizon. It was enormous and full and seemed to be glowing with a heavenly light as it crept into view.

Kezzie’s moon!

I don’t know why I said it. It crept in just as the moon did.

Every time, forever more, when I see a warm, full moon, orange in the sky, I will think of our granddaughter and how she crept up over the horizon and into our life and glowed so bright and new . . .

. . . just as she crept into our hearts as the warm breezes blew in on a new spring morning and she and her parents drew us north for a long awaited introduction. The blessing crept onto my tongue as we watched the moon rise, higher and higher into the heavens. A cloud drifted across it and dusted the moon with a soft veil and a con trail slipped past, slicing it in half for a short while before a halo crowned it.

It was beautiful and magnificent as it guided us on that last, long, leg of our journey, returning us home and setting us down after this little girl swept us off our feet and stole our hearts away.

Pat, if you are reading this, you and Mel are in for such a delight. I see so much of her daddy in her face – and of you.

A whirlwind of family pictures seem to have blown in like the mighty March wind and have kept me up late into night as they stirred up memories and made me wonder anew about my family’s tree.

I think it is good to stir up memories now and again, don’t you agree?

This is my father as a little boy. His face has been cropped from a larger picture of his family. The early 20th century type of picture. My grandfather, who I never knew, is sitting stoically on a chair. My grandmother, Yia Yia, is standing, her hand on his shoulder. My two uncles are bookends to their younger siblings. My father is seen on the left, staring into the camera, his elbow resting on the arm Papou’s chair. My aunt is on her father’s other side, a little hand resting on his knee, the only daughter, and as cute as the buttons gracing her dress. My uncles are about 9 and 12, still in knickers but wearing some handsome belted jackets. I get a sense that the two younger ones are ready to bolt as soon as the flash goes off and that their hands are on my grandfather for a good reason.

I love this picture and have displayed it for many years. They are part of my roots. I have other pictures of my maternal grandparents and I treasure them as well, but this one jumped out at me last week.

It happened when this little darling showed arrived in my inbox.

This is my father’s cousin. Bea. They were first cousins. Their father were brothers. Her face has also been cropped from a larger picture from the same time period. In the picture, Bea and older sister Georgia are standing next to their first cousin, a beautiful young woman. Little sister Helen is sitting on her lap. The two older sisters are delightful in their little dresses and enormous bows in their hair. When I looked closely, I could see them grasping small purses. I can only imagine the fidgeting that went on to get those bows fastened. They are all looking at the camera, not smiling, except for baby Helen, who looks about to giggle and squirm.

When I opened up my email and the faces of nearly a century ago gazed back at me, I was taken by surprise at the strenghth of my family’s traits. There was something so familiar in Bea’s sweet little face looked out at me. It mirrored that of my father as a youngster that has looked out at me all these years.

I have been so amazed at how very deep our family roots grow – and how high it’s limbs reach.

I wonder, how I wonder, where they will reach next?

Tuesday. 10:30 am.

I couldn’t sleep last night and wrote this early in the morning. Something was moving me deep inside. I fell asleep around 2:30 only to be awakened around 3:30, and finally the news around 9:30 that our first grandchild, a girl, was born around at 8:17.

Our blessing are many. March has always been a good month for girls to be born in my family. Our strong family trees have just grown a new branch.

This early riser is one of the brave bulbs I captured in a picture posted in February. She and her friends were just peeking through the snow and ice then, patiently saving their energy for just the right moment to show their true colors. I caught this darling daffodil primping in Friday morning’s sun. She patiently posed for me and the awakening day and I do believe she will be quite pleased with how the soft spring sunlight enhances her grace and beauty.

As I was watching speeches last Sunday night on the floor of the House of Representatives, someone other than the congressman speaking caught my attention and distracted me for a few moments.

Bubblegum. A sharply dressed, professional woman, notebook in hand, intent on the person at the podium, an aide I assumed to the speaker of the moment, was right in the eye of cameras from around the world, fervently chewing gum! Gum!

Gum chewing is a pet peeve of mine. I’m not a gum chewer, though I have been known to blow a big bubble or two in my time, and I recognize that there are people who chew gum for any number of medical or dental reasons.

Mrs. B was the girls’ health teacher in my high school. She was a nurse who taught us health as part of the physical education curriculum. She taught all the sex education classes, which was considered health, which was considered physical education. Mrs. B was stern, but often very funny. I can still see her fully attired in her nurse’s uniform, a starched white hat stiff on her auburn head, her daily uniform. She was the only adult dressed in stark white every single day of high school. She stood one morning in class, demonstrating what a girl looked like chewing gum, rotating her jaw in an exaggerated way on a pretend wad of gum, and saying in a very firm voice “I just hate to see a pretty young girl chewing her gum like a cow chews her cud!“. This image always stuck with me (pun intended) and the woman on the television, whom I’m sure was quite professional, looked at that moment like Mrs. B’s cow chewing her cud.

Men do the same thing, in case anyone thinks they are exempt here.

I am the one who gets gum stuck on the bottom of my sandals on a 90° + day while at the zoo, trailing a sticky string of someone else’s taste for a yard or so before realizing that it I was sticking to sticky tar, and I was the kid who was the recipient of a wad from the prankster in the seat behind me in 4th grade and had to have it cut out of my long, pretty hair, and I was the one who one day sat in a piece of “abc” gum at a high school assembly . . . you get the drift.

Jennifer came over to give us a massage this week. She will be certified as a massage therapist after a very intensive and long course of study, and she eagerly practices on us. I might add that we are more than willing to succumb to the wonders she performs on our aching, aging muscles. Not a hard sacrifice, to say the least.

This week’s massage was the best ever and I was as mellow as could be when she and her magic touch left. I was relaxed and re-hydrating and watching the news when the gum chewer of Sunday evening popped up briefly on the television. Chomp, chomp, chomp! I turned it off and picked up a magazine and there, right in front of me, was an article on gum with an image of bubble gum ice cream. Bubble gum – ice cream – and it all came back. My worst gum experience of all. The afternoon I took the girls out for ice cream. Katy, I’m sure, had something chocolate. Jennifer and friend Laura convinced me that they would eat it all and not make a mess and be silly if I let them each have a scoop of bubble gum ice cream.

Nothing is sillier than two little girls who promised not to be silly.

What was I thinking? What do you do with the bubble gum in ice cream, especially when you are 10 years old? There was too much gum, cold gum, for the girls’ mouths, especially chewed in with a giggle. They put it on napkins and the rim of a cup and I’m sure slipped it somewhere unseen when my head was turned . What do you do if you are on tv and all the world is watching?

Last summer, working out in our island of plants, I kept noticing a bird that resembled a robin. It would hop along the ground, seemed agitated, but was not afraid to be close to us. Some time passed and this activity continued. We kept noticing the bird around the property line and always on the ground. One day, with robins around, we could see some distinct differences. He was bigger than the robins with a shorter tail and his colors were more orange. He was more “grounded” and didn’t fly up to the trees like a robin, nor would this bird splash about in a puddle or frequent the bird baths like our American robin – and there was an interesting black mark around it’s neck. This was a bird of a different family that I had not seen before.

Bird books came off the shelves and google was employed for information.

Bird books and internet searches – how I love doing research!

Image taken from the Illinois State Museum site. A lithograph from an original painting done by Richard Sloane.

Meadowlarks build their nests in the ground and feed primarily on insects and seeds. They are known to live in weedy orchards, which makes our property a good environment for them to set up of housekeeping.

On Monday, looking out the livingroom window, I saw what, at first sight, looked to be several robins. My excitement mounted when I saw the difference in the body size, color, which is more subtle than this picture, and the wonderful black bib that Mr. Meadowlark wears.

I was glad to see the meadowlark’s return and am hoping to discover a nest, or two as the male often takes two mates.

My heart sung at yet another sign that spring was in the air as I pulled the bird books out again and read about the meadowlarks and marveled at how much more there is to see and learn about in this world of ours.

Katy mentioned that the last part of yesterday’s blog was morbid and it got me to thinking that maybe others felt the same way. The ducklings in the verse really don’t get lost, they come back, again and again to teach children to count and play and move and learn.

Let me explain. What I wrote was only one stanza from a children’s rhyming song. It can be a finger counting rhyme or a movement activity and there are all sorts of examples you can explore on YouTube. My first grade teacher, Miss Blood, who married the year I had her and became Mrs. Thone, a very good name change for a first grade teacher, don’t you agree, taught us this little tune. We would squat down on our knees, hold our ankles with our hands, waddling and pretending to be ducks, all together quacking during the song’s refrain.

Needless to say, I was a very awkward little duckling, though I could quack pretty well.

To add to the fun, there was a house with an alleyway on the way to school and guess what they had in their yard? Ducks! The ducks didn’t mind letting us visit through the grid of the fence – and neither did the homeowners. I was charmed, of course, by their darling duck faces and feathered bodies and all that quacking.

On a trip to Boston a few years ago, we went to the Boston Public Gardens. We sat on a bench after a day of wandering the Freedom Trail and every cemetery with skull and bones and dates hundreds of years old, and the Old North Church, Paul Revere’s house and Faneuil Hall before coming to rest in front of the ducklings that Boston made way for in the famous children’s’ book, Make Way for Ducklings.

Little children were climbing and sitting and even kissing these adorable ducks and try as we did, it was impossible to get any good pictures of the brood with all the children swarming around.

Have you read Make Way for Ducklings? It is one of my all-time favorite children’s books and it was fun to see these sculptures at the Boston Public Gardens one crisp day in Autumn.

Cover of Robert McCloskey's book, Make Way for Ducklings.

Thanks, Katy, for giving me a reason to write about yet another children’s’ book.

We arrived in Boston the same day that Jennifer and Jason and his family were leaving Boston. Tom and I had a great time, but, it would have been fun to meet up with them and even more to see the ducklings with Jennifer, who I am sure would have been crawling on them as well.

Below is one of the statues we managed to capture without a captivated toddler on it.

Analysis and reflection from someone endlessly fascinated with Louisa May Alcott. Member/supporter of Louisa May Alcott's Orchard House (including the Alcott International Circle) and the Louisa May Alcott Society.